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Thursday, January 16, 2014

Falling for Her Soldier, Ophelia London

Ophelia London has been kind enough to write a guest blog for today. She was born and
raised among the redwood trees in beautiful northern California. Once she was
fully educated, she decided to settle in Florida, but her car broke down in
Texas and she's lived in Dallas ever since. A cupcake and treadmill aficionado
(obviously those things are connected), she spends her time watching arthouse
movies and impossibly trashy TV, while living vicariously through the
characters in the books she writes.

Ophelia is the author of
DEFINITELY, MAYBE IN LOVE, ABBY ROAD, and the Perfect Kisses series including:
PLAYING AT LOVE, SPEAKING OF LOVE, and FALLING FOR HER SOLDIER (Jan 2014).

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Hi there! Ophelia,
here. I’m so happy to hop on your blog and give a little behind the scenes peek
into the creation of Falling for her
Solder, the third (and final—sob!) novel in my Perfect Kisses series.

When I decided to
write another smexy category romance, I knew I wanted music to play a huge part
in the story, almost like it was its own character. Since I’d already written a
book about a rock star chick (Abby Road)
and a high school show choir teacher (Playing
at Love - book one in Perfect Kisses),
I knew I needed to come up with something just as musically fun.

And what’s more fun
than putting hot people in embarrassing/sexy situations? So I decided to take
my sexy hero, Charlie—who is a staff sergeant in the Army—and make him learn
how to ballroom dance. Fun, right? Of course, the ONLY reason Charlie agrees to
dance is because he’s in love with a girl…Ellie.

Anyway, back to the
music…

Thanks to my father,
I’m a huge Frank Sinatra fan. But Sinatra’s not very relevant with today’s
romance readers. That’s when I settled on the smooth, croony sounds of Michael Bublé to be the backdrop of the dancing scenes in Falling for her Soldier. However, since
Charlie is having a hell of a time getting his macho marching feet to move
properly, he often gets frustrated and annoyed with Bublé voice and kind of blames him every time he
missteps. A muttered “Bublé” becomes Charlie’s favorite curse word.

As I was writing all
those frustrating/romantic dance lesson scenes, the “method writer” in me also
began to get irritated whenever a Michael Bublé song would come up on the playlist. “Grr, I hate that Bublé,” I would often mutter as I skipped ahead to
the next track. Not that I have anything personal against Michael Bublé. In fact, I pretty much love him and his dreamy
blue eyes. (Swoon!)

In the final, big
dancing scene, Charlie and Ellie don’t dance to Bublé, but to another dreamy crooner, although I
won’t give it away here… You’ll be happy
to know, however, that Charlie does end up with a soft spot in his heart for Bublé, knowing that whenever a Bublé song plays, that means he gets to dance with
Ellie…which is always worth it.

On a personal note, I
was at a wedding reception and my not-yet-but-soon-to-be-boyfriend asked me to
dance to John Denver’s “Annie’s Song.” It was probably the most romantic dance
floor moment in my life. Do you have a favorite song you like to dance to? Tell
me!